


protect me from what I want

by objectlesson



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon, Daddy Kink, Depression, Domestic, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post Season 3, Romance, Suicidal Ideation, This is a Hannibal fic so the usual fuckery, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-20
Updated: 2020-05-20
Packaged: 2021-03-02 16:55:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24280171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/objectlesson/pseuds/objectlesson
Summary: Hannibal. Solid and constant like the tide, like a sun dial, like snow. Will wanted desperately to burrow as deeply into him as he could, and freeze to death.Eventually he stopped wanting to die. The urge to burrow, however, stuck.or,Will never had a father figure.
Relationships: Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Comments: 88
Kudos: 466





	protect me from what I want

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this RIGHT after the series ended, and it, funnily enough, it was my first daddy kink fic EVER which is positively hilarious. I'm not sure it's good. I didn't really edit it and it has not been to a beta. I am mostly posting it because my friend Rachel is super into hannigram right now and I felt bad for sitting on a long ass story, and also because Hannibal is coming to Netflix and maybe people will want stuff! IDK. I hope someone likes it. 
> 
> Also, a note: I didn't read this through so I have no idea whats in it so there might be untagged shit? But literally its hannigram, like canon hannigram, so expect mental abuse and weird grooming and whatever else.

Will didn’t die. That had been his plan, thwarted again by Hannibal’s divine intervention. Hannibal’s miraculous body like a cockroach’s, refusing to die come nuclear waste, come war, come sea-water in open wounds. 

He didn’t die like he had intended to, the ultimate and final escape from his decaying ethical battle, the moral responsibilities he could no longer shoulder. Will Graham had been certain he could not live with the burden of loving to kill and loving a killer, so he pulled them both over the edge so he wouldn’t _have_ to live with it. He wouldn’t even have to _try_ , he wouldn’t have to make a decision to leave his former self behind in favor of the self Hannibal fashioned for him.

But he didn’t die. 

Neither of them died, so here they were. At a veterinarian’s office somewhere off the highway owned by a man who clearly owed Hannibal a favor, judging by his stony, unassuming silence when they arrived dripping blood and brine on his doorstep. Here they were, breathing, pain-sick, astonished. And by some (perhaps, subconsciously intentional) fracture in Will’s plan, _alive_. 

Under the hum of florescence, Will shook on the examination table, even though his numb fingers were clamped down onto the metal edge, grounding him beneath Hannibal’s careful hands. He shook, and tried to figure out why he hadn’t grabbed a scalpel from the counter with its dog-femur replicas and diagrams of feline digestive systems, and jammed it into Hannibal’s jugular, before his own. He imagined the hot spray of Hannibal’s blood on his lips, and reflexively licked them. 

Here they were. Two hearts still beating, countless wounds still weeping, aching. _Maybe the Dragon will kill me anyway_ , he wondered even as Hannibal sewed him up and fed him aspirin, pale and wet but functional as he pawed over Will’s body searching for more damage. _Maybe this is not the beginning. Maybe I’ll die of blood loss, infection. Maybe, maybe_. 

He only wondered, because Hannibal’s fingers smoothing gently over the neat stitches holding his right cheek together felt too good for him to really _hope_ to die. Only wonder if he would.

Shame curled up in his chest, twisted like a night crawler’s body being approached by a fishhook, in anticipation of pain. Will smiled weakly, stunned to realize his shame would likely die before he did, which seemed ironic, absurd. The smile died abruptly too, then, a terrible spike of pain killing it as his new stitches dragged across his teeth. 

“Don’t,” Hannibal said gently, rubbing his thumb across Will’s lips. “You will re-open the wound.” Will could smell the tangy bite of ocean on Hannibal’s hair as he dipped in closer, eyes narrowed to examine his handiwork as he bandaged over the stitches. “This will leave a scar,” he observed. 

“A memento,” Will mumbled, tongue slow with pain and painkillers, with the awful and awed overwhelm of surviving his own fall. 

Hannibal nodded, eyes very wet and very dark. “It will be lovely,” he murmured. 

Ice slipped down Will’s spine, making him shiver and pitch forward. He buried his face in Hannibal’s shoulder, inhaling sweat and salt and iron from the ruin of his shirt and wondering if he could survive surviving, if he was capable of taking on the type of life that inevitably sprawled before him. A life of loving killing, of loving a killer. He inhaled raggedly, terrified that he was not only capable, but _willing_. Wanting, even. 

Hannibal threaded his hands through the tangled, salt-stiff whorls of Will’s hair, holding him trapped and immobile against him, so solid. Will thought he should not find such peace there, struggling to breathe against the wall of Hannibal’s body, but for a moment, his mind stuttered to a blissful silence. If death was the ultimate surrender, then perhaps this was the penultimate. 

\---

For a few days, Will could do little for himself. It was in part an immobilizing depression of sorts: a combination of denial and morphine-dulled senses blurring the edges of his reality, slowing him, dampening his motivation. On top of that he had healing injuries, dozens of them and no hospital to monitor his recovery, only Hannibal and his suffocating love, his voice like a metronome soothing Will’s heartbeat to near nothingness. 

Still, he did not die. He slept most of the time, drifting in and out of fever dreams, dizzy and nauseated, forever wondering if the fragments he recalled from waking were real. Hannibal dressing his wounds, Hannibal pressing damp, heavy kisses to his hairline, Hannibal feeding him water through a tube, pain killers through a needle, Hannibal easing a sweat-soaked teeshirt over his head and wincing at the bruises he revealed, as if he was not entirely pleased with the rate of their fading. Hannibal, Hannibal. Solid and constant like the tide, like sun dial, like snow. Will wanted desperately to burrow as deeply into him as he could, and freeze to death. 

Eventually he stopped wanting to die. The urge to burrow, however, stuck. 

\---

Before a week passed, Hannibal made Will walk. He made him sip water from a straw and endure the bizarre sensation of it swishing past the wound in his cheek. He even made him breakfast.

“I can’t eat,” Will mumbled through his teeth, trying to keep the muscles of his face as slack as possible to avoid tearing and twisting. 

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Hannibal sounded very pleased, glancing over his shoulder at Will as he bustled around the kitchen with surprising enthusiasm for someone who was shot in the stomach and fell off of a cliff into the ocean only several days ago. Will blinked, realizing that his sense of time could be compromised, realizing he didn’t even know where they were, let alone how long it had been since they arrived there. It could have been six days, it could have been three. It could have been a month; he wouldn’t know. 

“I made you a soup,” Hannibal explained. “Ginger for the stomach, garlic for its anti-bacterial properties, miso for protein and B vitamins. It’s simple but it is likely all your stomach is ready for at this point. We will start easy.” He looked very strange in the loose fitting tee-shirt and sweat-pants he was wearing, smaller and older than Will would have described him if he were attempting to compile features for a sketch artist. Will followed the lines of his body with his eyes, the shrunken breadth of his shoulders, the jut of his ribs as he reached for a towel hanging from a rack below the sink, the shine of silver hair at his temples. Hannibal had noticeably aged in the three years they spent apart, and though Will had no words to explain _why_ , this realization sent a strange thrill through his body. It pleased him, perhaps, to see that even Hannibal was corruptible. 

He cleared his throat. “Where are we?” 

Hannibal glanced briefly around the room, simple and sparsely furnished. “One of many remote getaways I purchased some time ago in preparation for situations such as this one. Details beyond that are not important. Now. Eat,” he offered, holding a steaming mug of soup in steady hands. It had a plastic bendy straw in it, one of those red and white vertically striped ones from greasy roadside diners, and the image of Hannibal in such close proximity to something so very crude hit Will like lightening. Something primal snapped in his gut, and before he thought better of what it would do to his cheek, he was sputtering in hysterics.

“Don’t laugh too hard,” Hannibal cautioned, the corner of his mouth quirking up into a bemused smile. “You will reopen the wound, and the soup will sting.” 

Will already tasted blood, already knew it was hopeless. He choked and snickered and gasped, rocking back and forth upon couch Hannibal had steered him to, panicked and in more than a little pain. Hannibal watched, waited, smoothed a single hand over the rucked up mess of Will’s hair, the stark points of his vertebrae. “Will. Breathe. It’s alright, your body is still in shock, it--”

“No,” Will managed, choking, blinking back tears. He grit his teeth into a wild, feral grin, trying desperately to stop the laughter and still, failing. “It’s the straw,” he finally got out. “It’s just...I bet you never thought you’d end up here. Feeding a some... _man_ , really, a man nearing forty if we’re honest, feeding a _grown man_ a three ingredient soup through a gas station straw. It must feel terribly _mundane_ to you.” 

Hannibal shook his head. “On the contrary, I have imagined similar scenarios very many times, and there is nothing I would rather be doing on this earth.” 

Will snorted, white sparking across his vision, blood on his incisors. He felt sick with pain, overwhelm, disbelief, joy; it was a mess and he wanted Hannibal to clean it up. “Really, now. Here? With this straw?” 

Hannibal glanced at the soup, smiling again. “I admit the straw was a surprise, though not an entirely unpleasant one.” 

Nodding, Will swallowed his laughter down, felt it shudder and die in his throat as Hannibal’s words sunk into him. “I see,” he wheezed, lungs still tight and desperate. 

Hannibal reached for him, clasping his forearms in a firm, deliberate grip. Their eyes locked, and Will felt bowled over by blackness, love shining in them like the flash of bone from a tar pit. “Also, Will. You must remember you are still quite a young man, compared to me,” he added, voice grave. “A boy, really. Caring for you does not feel like a burden; It is my greatest pleasure, and I only wish for you to allow me to indulge it. You need to do no more.” 

Will stared, head cocked, waiting to feel something other than a deep and profound relief. Nothing came, so all he could do was swallow. “Ok,” he said eventually. 

Hannibal smiled, thumbs digging into Will’s pulse. “Thank you,” he murmured. “Now. Eat.”

\---

Will allowed Hannibal to hold his head steady and slide the straw past his lips, instructing him to suck, to keep it in the side of his mouth opposite the wound, which was raw and torn from his bout of laughter. It felt unspeakably good to do as he was told, to follow Hannibal’s voice like a light down a dark hallway. He didn’t care where it led, as long as _he_ was led. As long as he did not have to be the one forging his own way in the dark. 

“My good boy,” Hannibal may have murmured, voice muffled to near wordlessness against Will’s temple as he helped him with the straw. Will’s stomach dropped out from under the weight of a sudden and unexpected wave of heat, some confusing mixture of shame and relief twining so tightly together inside him he could not parse them apart. He considered asking Hannibal to clarify, pushing the straw out with his tongue so he could ask _what did you say?_ from beneath an arched eyebrow, but speaking hurt too badly to bother with, so he said nothing. Instead he sipped soup through the straw, cringing each time he swallowed, so grateful for the guiding pressure of Hannibal’s fingers on his chin, like a vice holding him in place. 

“We will try chewing in a few hours. I will make you something very soft, perhaps some ice cream,” Hannibal said as he did the dishes, eyes dark and glittering as he shot Will a lingering glance over his shoulder. “Does that sound tolerable?” 

Will gently fingered his cheek, wincing at the feeling of a raised scab beneath the bandage, tender ridges and the heat of something inflamed. He thought reflexively of little league games from his childhood, other boys from his team’s fathers taking them out for sundaes, pistachio topped in chipped walnuts, maraschino cherries. Will recalled feeling envious he did not have the type of father who bought him single scoops when he won, double scoops when he lost. He narrowed his eyes at Hannibal, wondering if this was yet another thing Hannibal could see inside him, some long-forgotten desire of his past, tucked away under an old catchers mitt, years worth of dust and memories, spoons licked clean. “You have an ice cream maker at your remote getaway?” He asked. 

“No,” Hannibal admitted. “But I can make do.” 

Will tried not to smile, because that, like speaking, hurt too badly. 

\---

“Come,” Hannibal directed, steering Will gently to the bathroom by his good shoulder, careful to favor the other one. “I’ve been cleaning and dressing your wounds, but you could benefit from a true shower.” Still dazed, Will imagined himself standing beneath a hot shower spray, steam swirling around him as he struggled to soap his body. It seemed like an impossible task; he could hardly lift his right arm and his balance was questionable. He was about to protest when Hannibal added, “I will help you.” 

Again. Humiliation, heat, and relief all tangled together like fishing line inside him, a knotted mess. Will nodded without answering, letting Hannibal guide him to the edge of the tub and help him sit gingerly, a one hand on his elbow, the other cupped neatly around his waist. It was not entirely necessary, all that contact, but Will was distantly comforted by it anyway. 

Hannibal’s touch was constant, deliberate. The touch of a man who was uncertain that the thing he was touching was actually real, the touch of a man who desperately wanted it to be. Will felt like salvation beneath Hannibal’s palms, and it was not a bad way to feel. Not if he could simply sit back and allow himself to be worshipped, not if he didn’t have to _do_ anything but exist, continue breathing in and out while Hannibal shaped him like he were made from clay. _I’m real_ , he felt the urge to say more than once, when Hannibal’s grip tightened and his gaze lingered so long it felt like it was burning marks into him. _I’m real and I’m not going anywhere. You’ve made sure I don’t have anything else. You’ve made sure I don’t even_ want _anything else._

Hannibal’s fingers skirted along the edge of the bandage adhered to Will’s pectoral, peeling medical tape from his skin and leaving a pink flush in its wake. The sight of his own healing stab wound nauseated him, so Will looked away, tilting his forehead into Hannibal’s bicep to steady himself. “I might faint in there,” he warned. 

“You won’t. Regardless, if you did, I would catch you. Just hold on to me.” Hannibal turned on the water. 

He looked away as Hannibal gracefully shucked his clothes, even though he had seen him in various states of undress multiple times, even though he was well aware Hannibal possessed no shame in things corporeal, that Hannibal _liked_ being on display for him and gauging his reaction, his discomfort. It was easier if Will saved himself from having to look, from having a reaction at all, though he supposed avoidance was a reaction in and of itself. 

Hannibal tested the water with an open hand before guiding Will beneath it, fingers splayed wide on his shoulder, his ribcage, his waist. Rivulets ran down his body and Will shuddered at how impossibly _good_ it felt, the burn and the wetness of it coursing over him like a baptismal. Better than he ever could have anticipated, better than any shower had ever felt in the whole of his history, the whole of his past. He wanted to sob, but even that was too much an effort for his body, so he simply sagged against Hannibal, arms draped over his shoulders, face buried in his neck. 

“Good,” Hannibal murmured, rubbing up his back. “Just let me.” 

Will let him. Let the water fall over their heads and pool between their flush bodies, let their brows nudge against each other, let his skin become hot and slick and red against Hannibal’s. It was easy. It felt like coming home, like finally falling asleep after three years of restless, insomniac longing. 

Hannibal lathered soap between his palms and tenderly cleaned the white and puckered flesh around Will’s stab wound, fingers gentle, prudent. “How does it feel?” 

“Everything feels good,” Will mumbled, bracing his hands on Hannibal’s waist, water dripping from his lashes as he stared at the sparse thatch of salt and pepper hair between Hannibal’s pectorals. “So good it’s unreal, good enough to die in. Shouldn’t feel so good,” he explained, eyes fluttering closed. Hannibal was older than he was the last time he saw him like this, older and thinner, but he still felt strong in an unearthly way before him, some crumbling monument weathered from decades of rain and sun. Something which would stand forever, a ruin long after humanity died out. Will wanted to fall to his knees before it, he wanted to be buried. He wanted so many things, things without names, things that confused him, ran his flesh through with barbs of shame, hunger. “You shouldn’t feel so good,” he decided finally, fingers tracing blindly and idly up Hannibal’s chest, to the flicker of his pulse, where they paused to rest. 

Hannibal inhaled raggedly, throat slick and shuddering under Will’s palm. “I should,” he murmured. His voice vibrated through both of their bodies and Will half-opened his eyes so that he could watch his adam’s apple bob and flicker, silver stubble coarse against his fingers. “It all should, because this is the way it is supposed to be. You have finally found yourself, Will.” 

Will swayed in the water, knees weak as Hannibal took his chin neatly in the junction between thumb and forefinger, and tilted him back to kiss him. It felt more like drowning than kissing, like the whole of the sea forcing itself down his throat and rending him apart like a locket, the shower choking him with billows of steam. Hannibal kissed him and kissed him, licking the inside of his cheek, the jagged wound aching under his tongue. 

Will hung from his neck, and tried not to collapse into how perfect it felt to have someone else breathe for him. 

\---

After Hannibal dried him off and dressed his wounds following their shower, Will busied himself with other small grooming tasks, things too base or human or private to allow Hannibal to do for him, even if part of him longed for it. He clipped his fingernails as best he could, shaved his neck with a straight razor and only nicked himself once. He waited to partake in his particular activity once Hannibal had returned to the kitchen to make ice cream; for he suspected Hannibal would find some way to convince him it was impossible to do for himself, and he did not want to give this one thing up, did not want to know what it might do to him to have Hannibal touch him like that, pull his skull back by his hair and slide a blade over the quiet ridges in his throat. 

It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Hannibal; It wasn’t that he thought he might kill him if he had his jugular beneath the edge of a straight razor. It was that he did not feel prepared to deal with how easy it would be, how _good_ it would feel to allow himself such vulnerability. If Will had dignity left to preserve, he figured the best way to go about it was keep his throat away from Hannibal’s knife. There were things he could do for himself, as long as Hannibal took care of the rest. 

He dabbed his neck dry, eyes narrowed at his own reflection in the mirror, how pale and thin the newly revealed skin looked, white run through with veins of blue. He bared his teeth like a wolf, and wondered when the last time they had been properly brushed was before squeezing a generous glob of toothpaste out onto the only brush there was at the sink, resting in a black cup beside the faucet. He suspected it was Hannibal’s, stomach twisting over a mixture of smug entitlement at invading Hannibal’s space, and a stunned satisfaction at the realization that Hannibal would likely not think it an invasion at all. 

Without thinking, Will jammed the toothbrush in his mouth, and started brushing. The pain was instantaneous, the burn of minty foam against his wound, seeping into the fissure and soaking through the bandage as he drooled, spat, cursed. Hands braced against the edge of the sink, Will sucked down a desperate mouthful of water from the faucet, which only made it worse. 

In seconds, Hannibal was upon him, prying apart the fierce clench of his jaw with his thumb, sweeping his index finger into his mouth to remove a thick wad of saliva and toothpaste foam tinted pink with blood. His nail scraped against his tongue and Will was instantly reminded of all the times one of his dogs picked up something, a bone or a potentially poison mushroom on the trail, and he had to grab their muzzle the force whatever it was out of their teeth with his bare fingers. The thought of Hannibal treating him as he treated his own dogs made his knees buckle, made his eyes slide shut in overwhelm. 

Hannibal kissed him then, licked the last remnants of tooth paste from his wound, sucked it from his tongue. “Did you forget again?” he asked then, breath all over Will’s lips, a fond smile on his own. “Or were you just feeling independent?” 

Will’s stomach flipped over, his heart speeding where it was trapped against Hannibal’s chest. He didn’t remember what happened; he was certainly not feeling independent now. “How am I supposed to brush my teeth?” he asked, licking his lips, wincing as Hannibal let out a small, involuntary gasp and dug his thumb into his cheek, an inch or so below the bandage, where he was still tender and fever-hot. 

“You will let me help you,” Hannibal murmured, relenting the fierceness of his grip. “Wait here.” 

He left Will leaning against the sink, shaking and shaken, and returned several minutes later with a leather-bound first aid kit. Will watched him unzip it and snap on a pair of rubber gloves, which he might have rolled his eyes at a little. “Really? Your _tongue_ was just in my mouth and you’re concerned about sanitation protocol?” 

Hannibal smiled, peeling open the wrapper of a cardboard tongue depressor and a square of cotton gauze. “I must admit, it is somewhat of a habit. One that is not always necessary.” 

“I hate the taste of latex,” Will told him. “Just wash your hands and use your bare fingers.” 

Hannibal nodded and complied, stealing glances at Will over his shoulder every few seconds in the way that seemed reflexive, compulsive. As if he could not truly trust his gaze, as if Will were something imagined, holographic, spectral. 

“I’m real,” Will said finally. It slipped out of him, also reflexive, compulsive. Some deep and primal magnetism which compelled him to comfort Hannibal as he was being forever comforted, suspended so that his feet did not have to touch the cold ground. Hannibal smiled and reached for him, thumbing gently over his lower lip, and in spite of himself, the corner of Will’s mouth twisted up into a half smile, too. 

“In the three years I spent waiting for you to return, on the worst days I would see you. Standing in the corner on the other side of the glass, blood on your hands, as if you had just killed and realized you could not do it without me,” Hannibal breathed, moving to stand in front of Will, their hips brushing together as he backed him into the bathroom counter. “Moments would pass before I realized you were not truly there, but only a figure from my memory palace manifesting there, in my cell. Born from my longing.” 

“Do you wonder if that’s where we are? Your memory palace?” Will asked quietly, eyes fixed on Hannibal’s mouth, which may have been trembling at the corner. 

“No,” Hannibal answered thoughtfully, tilting Will’s head back gently with one hand and gesturing for him to open his mouth. He peered inside, examining the inside of his cheek. His fingers tasted like cane-sugar, like sundaes after little league. “I know where I am. It is you who seems, as they say, too good to be true.” 

“I’m real,” Will repeated once Hannibal’s fingers were no longer in his mouth. “I’m here.” 

Hannibal nodded, lips flattening out together in a line. “So you are.” Then, after a moment of regarding him there, trapped against the counter beneath the subtly leaning weight of his body, Hannibal sighed. “Now, open your mouth.” 

Will’s face felt hot as he obeyed, closing his eyes while Hannibal inserted the square of gauze between his cheek and jaw, followed by the tongue depressor, which he used to gently hold the flesh away from his teeth. It left enough space for him to slide the toothbrush in unobstructed. 

Hannibal brushed his teeth for him, nudging his jaw open and closed with his thumb so he could be thorough and reach every surface, gaze so focused, so careful, it made Will want to fall asleep. He just stood there, dazed, while Hannibal instructed him to turn his head to the right, the left, to curl his lips back if he could and it didn’t hurt too badly, to keep his tongue to one side, to the other. 

Will hated the dentist, and he distinctly recalled incredible urges from his childhood to bite the dental hygienists fingers off when she came to pick and scrape at his gums with one of those horrible tools, this but was entirely different. Like Hannibal bathing him, feeding him; he didn’t want it to end. Part of him didn’t even want his wounds to heal and lose the excuse to have Hannibal looking at him like this, eyes narrowed in tender scrutiny like he were his _child_ , rather than his patient. The mere thought made his heart clench in a strange, nameless desperation. He shut his eyes, and Hannibal carefully removed the tongue depressor. “You may spit now, but try and hold your cheek away from your teeth as you do so to prevent contact,” he advised. 

“How?” Will slurred, his index finger hooked uselessly into corner of his mouth as he turned to the sink mechanically, staring at the porcelain and wondering why he felt so incredibly demotivated and useless when Hannibal’s hands weren’t all over him. 

“Like this,” Hannibal said curtly, chest brushing against Will’s back as he reached around him, two fingers replacing Will’s as he kept the inside of his cheek from touching teeth, toothpaste. Will drooled messily, groaning little. Just a short, involuntary sound because he felt so overcome with gratitude there weren’t words, there was nothing but the taste of sugar and salt and the ghost of latex, Hannibal’s heartbeat against his spine and his breath against his neck. “Spit,” he ordered. 

Will did. 

\---

They carried on this way for days, weeks, eventually a full month. Will ate and gained weight under Hannibal’s supervision; his stab wounds reached the healing stage where they itched as much as they ached. Will spent most of his time inside, laying on the couch curled up beside Hannibal reading books he never otherwise would have looked into were it not for the small, selective library Hannibal had at this particular location. He picked his way through Camus, Kierkagaard, Dickinson, but eventually got pulled magnetically into Dostoevsky, which he would have thought impossible before Hannibal. 

He finished a short story collection of his before he began _Crime and Punishment_ , which he had to prop up against Hannibal’s shoulder or chest after an hour or so of reading because the weight of it strained his shoulder in any other position. For hours each day he got lost in the twisting streets of St. Petersburg, everything dark and dirty and bloodstained, even the crosses, even white silk. It was comforting, somehow, to read about the horror of humanity undistorted through the lens of love, which immutably altered his reality now, to such an extent he sometimes forgot the horror of it, the horror without the beauty. 

Hannibal read, too, but mostly he watched Will read, or laid beneath him and the novel with his eyes closed and listened to his opera records, tears welled up unfallen in the corners of his eyes like his limbs falling asleep under the weight of Will’s reading body moved him to silence, to transcendence. Will sometimes propped himself up enough to thumb the tears away, and Hannibal always smiled at him, pushed hair from his eyes and traced the bones in his face, visibly astounded. Will had grown to accept that he had never felt more real, or realized, than he did when Hannibal looked at him like this. As anticipated, the shame at such a realization was dying fast, replaced by something vast and brilliant and powerful, something which chased all logic or reason out of Will’s body like a splinter festered from swollen skin. 

When Will felt strong enough, they went on brief, brisk walks around the property, which was, indeed, remote. The house was clearly somewhere in rural New England, Western Massachusetts or upstate New York or even Maine, though Will could not be sure and didn’t care enough to wheedle it out of Hannibal. The scenery was all grey scrubby brush decayed from being stuck beneath heaps of dirty snow during the winter, naked trees like ghosts, white and skeletal against the horizon. It was beautiful, in an apocalyptic, Dostoevsky type of way. 

Sometimes they stood at the edge of a creek which wound its way behind the house, a small, nearly freezing thing which made Will wish he had a dog or two or ten to watch run around in the dead leaves, lapping from the stream noisily before tearing off after the squirrels. He leaned against Hannibal, arm in the crook of his elbow, their breath mingling together in visible plumes of steam before them. 

Will watched the water flow swiftly over rocks, black and flickering like a live crystal snake slicing through the grass. Hannibal watched Will like he might disappear if he didn’t, take off running like there was somewhere to run to, some way to escape. 

“Do you miss Virginia?” Hannibal asked him once, and Will suspected he meant more than just Wolf Trap, that he was asking if he missed Molly, Walter, his dogs, his sailboat, the FBI, his morality. It did not change the answer. 

“No,” Will murmured, thinking of Virginia and all that he left behind there fleetingly, something faraway and questionably real, like a memory half-forgotten from his childhood. His father dragging him over his knee and beating the backs of his thighs with an open palm the first and only time he ever caught Will lying about something, a sleepless night at his grandparents’ house spent sitting up stock still in his bed while he listened to a pack of coyotes bray and yip and howl for hours, terrified it was the devil. Things he thought may have happened to him, but could not be certain. “Everything from my old life seems like it died. Or, that the version of me who _would_ have missed Virginia died, and the new version of me is just standing in his place, taking his name. Disconnected from things he loved or cared about or felt a part of.” 

“Perhaps you are compartmentalizing your sentiment for that old life. Choosing not to feel the loss, because you know instinctually it may be too much to bear.” 

Will shook his head. “Maybe. Or maybe that old version of me died a long time ago. Back when I met you, back when this started and everything changed. Maybe Virginia, Baltimore, and everything in them were just things I was sticking to that corpse, crying to convince myself I was different, human. Because I hadn’t admitted yet that I’m not.” 

“Will,” Hannibal murmured, voice thick and hoarse. “You are exquisitely human, still. Just because the rest of our species pales in comparison, just because they deny themselves things you chose to revel in, does not mean you do not come from the same place. You are the very loveliest example of humanity, but you are human, all the same.” 

Will was not sure why, but Hannibal’s voice all dark and low and raw with love always made him feel like he could barely stand, like he might buckle beneath the incredible weight of the sky above him, the earth’s core below him. The arousal it sparked in his gut, the terror it shivered down his spine, those made sense. Hannibal had conditioned Will to want him. But the overwhelming urge to _give up_ , to crumble into the tide of Hannibal’s love and cease to exist as a functioning adult, that was new. Confusing. One day Will would press on it, but for now, he was content to blame it on his injuries. 

“Let’s go back,” he sighed. “I feel like I need to lie down again.” 

“Certainly. I will make you tea and rub your back with Arnica, would you like that?” Hannibal asked, sliding a protective arm around Will’s waist as they turned back, pulling him close to his side like he was worried he might toddle ahead, trip, hurt himself like a child. Will wasn’t planning on it, but regardless, he is grateful that Hannibal stole his choice. 

“Sure,” he answered. That was all he wanted, really. Hannibal’s certain hands digging deep into the taut, oiled muscles of his back, Hannibal blowing on his tea to cool it, guiding a straw between Will’s lips even though he didn’t really need it anymore. Hannibal reaching across the table and using Will’s fork and knife to cut his meal into small bites, child-sized morsels Will could easily chew without straining his cheek. He wanted to be patronized, condescended to. He wanted Hannibal to assume he could do nothing for himself, to look at him like he was nothing but himself. Real, realized. 

Arm in arm, they walked back to the house, dry underbrush crunching beneath their shoes, and at least part of Will thought that even this was too much work, too much effort, and wished Hannibal would slide an arm under his knees and lift him, carry him home across the Wolf Trap snow like he once did. 

\---

Hannibal was not gone twenty minutes before Will felt the onset of panic, rumbling distantly inside him like far-away thunder, an oncoming storm. There was no logical reason for Will to fall apart like a sweater with a fraying hem; Hannibal had only gone on a supply run for the basics they needed: Neosporin, groceries, toilet paper. He would be back soon, and Will should have been able to endure stretches of time alone. He wasn’t a _boy_ , after all. 

Regardless, he could not calm the fever in his mind, the spiraling pattern wound so tightly the words of his internal dialogue became spliced, nonsensical, meaningless. He wasn’t even ruminating over any particular _thoughts_ anymore; he wasn’t worried Hannibal was going to get recognized or caught, he wasn’t worried about Jack Crawford or the FBI. He simply did not want to be alone in this house, lost in a nameless New England state, healed in some ways but entirely broken in others. 

He didn’t die. He didn’t _die_ , but that didn’t mean he was very good at being alive, either. 

His anxiety came on like food poisoning, in waves of nausea and cold sweat coursing from the crown of his skull down his spine. Without Hannibal’s presence in the house he felt lost, untethered, like a balloon cut free from its ribbon left to drift steadily sky-ward until the pressure became too great and ruptured him, sent him spiraling back to earth, tattered and deflated. It disturbed him, how reliant he had grown upon Hannibal and his breathing, his quiet humming, the contented sighs into his own ear when they laid side by side reading. Will’s scars had silently healed around the knowledge that even as he slept, Hannibal was there. Tidying up the kitchen or scratching away at his notebook, ever-present, watching like God. 

Will wondered for the hundredth time since surviving his fall if he had regressed into some former version of himself, the ugly and embryonic thing he used to be before he learned to avert his eyes when he talked to other children until they grew so uncomfortable they left him alone. To avoid contact with strangers, conceal his difference and pass beneath the radar undetected. 

The terrible clench of panic in his throat reminded him of childhood, in some ways. He thought of the instances his parents had both arrived home hours later than expected, kept late for work or stuck in traffic, typical pre-cell phone mini-dramas common in working class families, things which should not have shaken Will as they did. He had been completely incapable of caring for himself in those moments, face down on his bed breathing hard, lungs tight and shallow as he invented thousands of gruesome ends his parents could have met. Car accidents, rogue zoo bears, serial killers escaped from prison. 

Growing up poor made Will resourceful; he eventually learned to cook spaghetti-os for himself and turn the heater on and struggle with the microwave while he waited, but even then the initial spike of fear, wild and feral in his chest, never truly faded. It was as if even then he knew there was something wrong with him, that he could not be trusted to exist responsibly in the world without breaking something, going awry. 

Will ran himself a bath, determined to at least to go through the motions of self care, lest Hannibal come home and find him dismantled, another discrepancy in their power for him to exploit. He watched the tendrils of steam rise and curl above the water’s surface before lowering himself in, head bent, heart thundering. He tried not to think of Hannibal slumped and unconscious behind the wheel of their stolen car, Hannibal’s wrists in bound in iron, Hannibal’s blood on the snow, just as he used to imagine the blood of his father. 

Another twenty minutes passed, and again, Will didn’t die. 

Finally, he heard the scrape of wheels outside. his whole body sagged in relief as Hannibal let himself in, the familiar key in the lock, the comforting cadence of his footsteps upon the floorboards in the hall. 

Hannibal knocked on the bathroom door as he let himself in, a breach in his usual etiquette because he felt as if Will was an extension of himself, something he owned, was entitled to. At least that’s what Will suspected whenever Hannibal did something rude, like walking in on another man bathing. Even if it was a man he had bathed, a man he had killed for, killed with. It was so _hard_ to draw lines with Hannibal, to imagine boundaries when Hannibal had been inside Will’s head, when they had done so many unspeakable things together. When you’ve shared the sacred rite of murder, was there such a thing as privacy? Will didn’t know; he tried to kill them both to avoid having to answer such a question, and had not quit running since he didn’t die. 

Will shivered when dark eyes fell on him, swept warmly over his body as Hannibal approached, sinking to the edge of the bath tub in one easy, fluid motion.

“You wore cufflinks to Stop and Shop?” Will asked, bemused as he watched Hannibal undo said cufflinks and slide them into his breast pocked before deftly unbuttoning his sleeves and rolling them neatly to his elbow ditch. “So much for blending in.” 

“I wore the whole ensemble under that dreadful jacket of yours,” Hannibal told him, smiling. “Northface, the polar fleece covered in dog hair. The cufflinks were just for me, my own peace of mind.” 

“I hope wearing that jacket wasn’t too painful,” Will said, staring rapt and quiet as Hannibal neatly tucked his cuffs into place. Everything Hannibal did was so measured, so intentional. Watching him roll up his sleeves was like watching a lioness stretch in the sun, flexing her claws. Just a small, mundane gesture, but still imbrued in the power of a predator, the threat of violence in the tempered strength of his hands. 

It was _so hard_ to draw lines with Hannibal when he had seen those hands snap necks, when he had seen them slide up the insides of his own thighs. Everything was muddy, it all blended together into mess of blood and spit and wine in Will’s eyes, blacking out his vision until Hannibal held him still, pried the lids apart, and swept the sheen away. It was so confusing, so _hard_ , to have Hannibal Lecter be the agent of his newfound sight. 

He reached for Will and made a loose fist in his hair. Will melted immediately into it, eyes sliding shut, head tilting back to Hannibal’s sway as his neck slackened. It felt like bending to the wind, like drifting out to the tide. So easy, so natural, who was Will to fight nature when it made a fist in his hair and pulled him open like a seed cracked in the sun?

“Are you sore?” Hannibal asked, scratching idly at Will’s scalp. “Or were you cold?” 

“Neither,” Will said. “Just wanted a bath.” It was a lie, but he didn’t know how to tell Hannibal _you can’t leave me alone. It feels like suffocating, I don’t know how to breathe without you anymore._ He didn’t want to give Hannibal everything he desired in one solitary breath. 

Hannibal let go of him briefly to squeeze some castille soap onto a washcloth, which he carefully lathered between his palms. Will rested his crossed arms upon his knees before pillowing his head upon them, simultaneously hiding his face from Hannibal while exposing his back. He was distantly aware it was a submissive position to be in, offering his body for care, belying his desperation for it, but he couldn’t be bothered with dignity right now. As long as he didn’t have to beg with his voice, with his eyes, he could live with himself.

Hannibal’s fingers grazed his scapula, and Will bent his head as if in prayer. 

Gently spreading one palm on Will’s shoulder, Hannibal used the other to lather his skin, sliding the washcloth over his ribs, down his spine. Will’s wound had healed enough Hannibal could touch it easily, inch his fingers into the puckered whorl of scar tissue, still tender but far from bleeding. “I guess I technically don’t need you to do this for me anymore,” Will half-lied. “I can lift my arm.” 

“Yes,” Hannibal agreed, ghosting his fingers over the old wound tenderly. “But do you want me to?” He added then. 

Will’s face burnt against his arms. He inhaled deeply, and after a few moments of chewing the inside of his lip raw, he admitted, “Yes.” 

“Then I shall,” Hannibal said, as if it was simple. Maybe it was. 

He dipped down and kissed Will’s scar, lips lingering there as he mouthed over the topography of ruined flesh like it was not ruined at all. There, against wet skin, Hannibal bent his head as if in prayer. 

\---

It happened slowly. Will healed, but little changed in regards to Hannibal’s smothering care. 

Will continued to feel pleasantly leashed, choked upon the feathers of the vast black wing Hannibal kept him beneath. He could easily open his mouth to accommodate things far wider than a fork, but still, Hannibal reached across the table to cut whatever meal he had just served into small, bite sized pieces for him. Will once wondered if it bothered Hannibal to see his (more modest, but certainly still superb) meals sliced up, deconstructed from their original presentation. If occurred to him shortly after that it must not, because Hannibal was transparently pleased to commit to the ritual each night, elbow well into Will’s personal space as he cut his work to pieces, murmuring things like “remember, you must let it cool off a moment. The balsamic reduction is still quite hot. You may burn yourself.” 

Things a father said to a son. Will perhaps should have been disturbed by this recurring revelation, but on the contrary, he found it deeply, profoundly soothing. He wasn’t even disturbed by his lack of revulsion, when he surely would have buckled under the weight of shame and self loathing were he to have felt such a thing three years ago, five years ago. When he first met Hannibal and was drawn in by the placid, river-sure sound of his voice, when he first began allowing Hannibal to do things for him, take things from him. It was strange, _striking_ , really, how completely he had failed to break free from this pattern, even after three years of forcing Hannibal’s name from his heart whenever it needled its way into him, fierce and unbidden. 

He wanted Hannibal to cook for him; he wanted Hannibal to cut up his food and tuck a linen napkin into the collar of his shirt. He wanted Hannibal to treat him as if he did not know how long it took for balsamic reduction to cool before it was safe to swallow. He _wanted_ to be treated like a child. 

Will blamed this desire upon his failure to kill them both. He planned to die, so he was not prepared to live. He was, however, grateful that Hannibal was so very willing to do it for the both of them. 

\---

One night they lay in bed, Will spread out beneath Hannibal’s sharp, insistent mouth. He marked Will up in one hundred different places, half-moons of pink beginning beneath his clavicle and leading haphazardly down his ribs, his stomach. There they gave way to darker, deeper bruises, framing Hannibal’s deepest kiss, the scar white and surgeon-smooth where it stretched from one hip bone to the other. Will had spent so much time finding this mark and feeling along the length of it over the last three years, tracing it as Molly slept inches away from him. He used to wonder if he would ever be the same, if anything would ever feel _right_ again.

Here, as Hannibal mouthed the dark, fine hair beneath his navel, Will felt right. 

Hannibal scoured his face against the heaving jut of Will’s ribs, breathing hard and longing, thumbing over Will’s bones with enough depth and pressure to shatter him. Will imagined lying in the bed like that, just a soup of blood over cracked ivory, Hannibal willingly drowning in it all, sucking at his carotid artery and plunged wrist deep in a hot ruin of organs. Will gasped at the image, cock twitching under Hannibal’s broad palm. Groaning in appreciation, Hannibal rubbed his face against Will’s thigh, smeared the flickering plane of muscle in a sheen of tears. 

“Will,” he murmured, sliding fingers beneath the curve of Will’s ass, bringing him closer to breathe into, to such desperate hungry lungfuls of air as he buried is his face between Will’s thighs. “May I?” he asked. 

Head lolling messily against his pillow amid a halo of oily dark hair, Will struggled to process what Hannibal was saying. Hannibal rarely asked for permission during sex, and it had always been something Will was grateful for. The thought of telling Hannibal what he wanted was terribly overwhelming; he was content to be worked over and manipulated while Hannibal took and took, pushing Will into whatever position he wanted him in and wrecking him, breaking him open and licking his insides until it felt like there was nothing left in Will which was not slick with Hannibal’s spit, his exalted tears. 

Will lost himself in Hannibal’s transcendent hunger for him, he _ached_ for it, desperate to be erased, consumed, built in a new image. He squinted in the dark, hand carding clumsily through Hannibal’s sweat-damp hair. “What?” 

Hannibal mauled up over his chest, stopping at the wild flicker of his pulse to push down, squeeze, make Will choke and sputter and writhe under him. “May I use your mouth?” 

“For what?” Will breathed, mind still a mess of static and confused longing. 

Hannibal laughed, voice rich, hoarse, broken. “My sweet boy,” he mumbled, and the words sent surprising hooks of arousal into Will’s gut, twisting deep and wrenching a muted, involuntary sound from his lips. He felt young and stupid and drunk under Hannibal, Hannibal whose eyes were wet and glittering in the dark, brimming over with feeling, Hannibal who could do anything he wanted to him, who didn’t need to ask. 

Hannibal shifted up Will’s chest so he could kiss him hard, lick deep into his mouth and sweep his teeth with his tongue. They broke apart, and he held Will down as he tried to arch up off the bed, chasing heat. “I want every single thing from you,” Hannibal said, breath hot and damp against Will’s lips. “But I can wait until your cheek is fully healed. Perhaps you are not ready.”  
“Fuck,” Will hissed, pushing his hips up off the bed and into Hannibal’s palm, feeling the slide of his thumb through a slick of precum. “It’s _fine_ , it’s healed. Just tell me what you want, just take it from me.” 

Hannibal shuddered, brow nudging against Will’s, tears dripping down to his hairline. “I can have you here?” he asked, quietly, thumbing over Will’s already swollen lips. 

Will nodded, “You can fuck my mouth. You can have whatever you want.” He gripped Hannibal’s shoulders tight, realizing suddenly that in all their times together, most recently and three years ago, he had never sucked Hannibal off. It didn’t fit neatly into their dynamic, the careful, dangerous game they had played before ending up here. He licked Hannibal’s cheek, the cords of his throat, stubble-rough and salty with sweat. “I don’t know how to do it, you’ll have to show me,” he admitted. 

Hannibal buried his face into Will’s shoulder, inhaling deeply. “Sweet boy,” he murmured again, smoothing his hand tenderly over the damp curls of Will’s hair. “I will teach you.” 

The idea of Hannibal teaching him how to suck his cock made Will’s stomach collapse in wrecked, maddened yearning. Insides tight and hot and knotted, he shook his head, licked his lips, murmured, “please.” He said it mindlessly, but he watched it darken Hannibal’s eyes, watched him stare with a gravity beyond love, edging on rapture. “Please,” he said again so he could continue to be real, realized. He palmed up Hannibal’s thighs, which were splayed and trembling over his own hips. “Please.” 

Hannibal shifted so his knees were on either side of Will’s head, pulling his cock free from the slit in his boxers while he combed his fingers through Will’s hair with his other hand. “You must go slow,” he said gently. “I can hardly last looking at you.” 

Will found himself mildly surprised at how badly he wanted this, wanted his mouth split over the width of Hannibal’s cock, wanted the tip nudging against the scar on the inside of his cheek, stinging and salty and bitter. “Just tell me what to do,” he breathed, lips nearly ghosting across the head, red and glistening and hot to the touch as he brushed his knuckles down the length. 

“Open your mouth,” Hannibal said, voice even, but only just. He slid his thumb over the pout of Will’s lower lip before edging it past his teeth, guiding his jaw wider. “Use the tip of your tongue.” 

Will obeyed, licking at Hannibal’s slit so soft and wet, eyes falling closed and twitching beneath the lids as he swept his tongue back and forth in wide strokes. The taste wasn’t totally unfamiliar; he had tasted himself on Hannibal’s lips countless times, he’d sucked his own fingers experimentally after Hannibal spilled over his fist. Still, the burn in his mouth, the sharp bite of salt so human and organic, made his heart wreck itself to ruin against the inside of his chest. Too much, too good, and he hated himself for having not done this before, back when his cheek was still so tender it hurt to speak. 

He groaned, flicking his tongue beneath the ridge on the underside of Hannibal’s cock, gripping his thighs so hard that he hissed above him. “Will,” Hannibal breathed, pushing wet hair from his brow, fingers trembling over Will’s lips as he licked at him. “You are so terribly, terribly lovely.” 

Will closed his lips over the head, sucking gently, messily. Then he slid off to breathe, stunned that something so simple and filthy could feel so astoundingly good. “Am I doing it right?” he asked, looking up at Hannibal from beneath a coyly raised brow. 

Hannibal sighed deeply, pushing his fingers into Will’s mouth as if to feel the slickness on his fingers before fucking into it. “You’re exquisite.” 

“Tell me what you want,” Will murmured, breath feathering out hot and damp. 

“Open your mouth again, and give me your hand,” Hannibal instructed, sweat dripping from his chin and landing on the flutter of Will’s pulse as he adjusted over him, guiding Will’s palm to the base of his cock. “Grip what you cannot take. Use your tongue, move your lips to create friction, breathe through your nose,” he explained, thrusting shallowly into Will’s fist. “Just looking down at you is perfect,” he added. 

Will did as he was told. He felt drunk on the smell of Hannibal’s skin, rich and clean and spicy with sweat and arousal as he opened his mouth and took the length of him into his mouth, lips sloppy and wet. He sucked, lapping instinctually, groaning at how fucking _hot_ Hannibal’s skin was beneath his palm, down his throat. 

Hannibal slid his hand under Will’s neck and held him up so the strain was not so much, thrusting shallowly, breath falling out in great, messy huffs. He curled his fingers into Will’s hair and pulled, manipulating him so that his mouth was exactly where he wanted it. 

Will pulled off in a slick of drool, panting. “You can fuck me until you come,” he murmured, jerking Hannibal off in broad, firm strokes. “I can take it. Just use me.” 

Fingers stilling at the base of Will’s skull, Hannibal shook with a sharp, ragged intake of breath. “My sweet boy,” he murmured again, pushing deep into Will’s mouth, making him cry out at the raw drag of still-tender flesh over such heat, such thickness. Will held onto Hannibal, palms trembling up the wild spasming of his abdominals, up to his chest, where he could feel the solid, frantic pounding of Hannibal’s heart. He wanted to touch it, crack his ribs and pry them apart and emerge with blood slicked fingers to lick clean. 

Eyes streaming, he let himself be choked to gagging, he let Hannibal drown him, suffocate him, fill him until he spilled over, chin shining with saliva. _Good boy, sweet boy_ , Hannibal prayed into the night, mine and only mine, and although most words lost their weight and meaning during sex, those, somehow, did not. 

\---

Will thought about those words for days to come, and the wild thrill of pride they drove into him, the terrible surge of flame they fed in his gut. _Good, sweet_ , he thought. And most troubling of all, _boy_.

Will wanted badly to be Hannibal’s boy, however strange and vile and shameful a thing it was to want. He wanted to be kneaded and softened like beeswax in warm palms, he wanted to be shaped into something new, something raw and helpless and tender and undifferentiated. He wanted Hannibal to fuck his mouth to ruin each night until his cheek re-opened and he bled crimson into white cotton sheets; he wanted to be forever wounded so that Hannibal would continue to sew him up. 

_Boy_. Will tried it on tentatively, experimentally, just to see how it felt to have an excuse for his newfound and debilitating weakness. It seemed to fit so comfortably that it stopped feeling like weakness at all. 

He imagined asking Hannibal about it. _How would you feel if I fantasized about you being my father? Would it disgust you? Disappoint you? Do you only love me if we are the same, if I’m your equal?_

But even thinking about the conversation seemed absurd, laughable. He suspected there was nothing left in him anymore which he did not owe, at least in part, to Hannibal’s design. If he longed for Hannibal as a father, it was likely because Hannibal _wanted_ it that way, fashioned some messy, perverse desire from Will’s raw material, his bones and his memories and his fears long buried, afternoons alone steeped in panic and sundaes on Sunday. 

After all, Hannibal was the one who called him _good, sweet_. Hannibal was the one murmuring _my boy_ , in a voice all breath and whisper as he tucked Will in at night, pressed a lingering kiss to his temple, lips soft and reverent. 

And that was another layer Will had to grapple with: the reverence, the prayer. Hannibal was _everything_ , his love and his compass and now, confusingly, something _else_. So many conflicting roles all swept into one suffocating presence to crawl into, die beneath.

But beyond that, Hannibal was also Divinity. Resurrected after the three year triduum, arms outspread and beckoning, suffer the little children, come unto me. A Father, as well as a father. And Will knew with certainty that he was the same thing to Hannibal. His God to pray to, an alter for his every sacrificial lamb, the light which delivered him from banality, guided his art, his cruelty. Hannibal loved him, certainly, but he was also transcended by him.

Will was forced to wonder if all the cloying care, the food and the hot baths and the nightly anointing, was something Biblical, rather than paternal. When Hannibal sunk to his knees to kiss his brow, Will twitched in half sleep, wondering if Hannibal was praying to him, or for him. 

\---

The first time they talked about it, Hannibal was the one who brought it up. They had been sitting on the couch sharing an orange; Will hadn’t stopped craving citrus since his cheek healed enough to actually enjoy the stinging sweetness of it, so Hannibal made sure there were always options. Oranges, grapefruits, Pomelos. All of which he peeled for Will, digging his thumbnail into the thick flesh so that the spray of oil stained his palm, smelling sharp and green like the forest around them. 

The orange remains sat in a shallow glass bowl between their bodies, the fruit long since eaten. Will found a stopping point in his book and stood up to take the bowl into the kitchen and set it on the counter, and as he returned to sink back onto couch beside Hannibal and haul Crime and Punishment back into his lap, Hannibal caught the tail of his shirt in a firm fist, and tried to haul Will into his lap, instead. 

Awkwardly, Will buckled, holding himself up with the backs of his thighs braced against Hannibal’s knees and a hand clamped onto the arm of the couch, white knuckled and vice like. “Where do you want me?” he asked, thinking that surely, surely Hannibal did not expect him to actually _sit_. He tried to think of the last time he rested atop someone’s thighs like that, he decided it was probably a Santa Claus at the mall, some hazy half-memory from childhood. 

“Here,” Hannibal said, patting his lap. “Please.” 

Will made a face somewhere between a grimace and a stunned half-smile, well aware that the flush of humiliation was climbing his cheeks. “Are you sure? I’m not _that_ much smaller than you,” he reminded Hannibal, pushing his glasses nervously up his nose, teeth clenched together.

“I am quite sure,” Hannibal answered, looking up with a gaze so affectionate and patient it was infuriating, his fingers still twisted into the hem of Will’s undershirt. The corner of his lips twitched up into a fond smile, and he used his other hand to help guide Will down by his elbow. Will reminded himself of a dog, one that did not want to walk being dragged miserably along on a leash, so he relented an inch or so, well aware of how those fights were won. “Come here,” Hannibal added, voice very soft. 

Will didn’t know what to do or how to arrange himself. He perched on Hannibal’s knees without giving his full weight over, stiff and tense, certain he was too heavy, too sharp and too large to be contained on Hannibal’s body. Again, he thought of a mistrustful dog and tried to relax, but it felt too vulnerable, too raw to sink into Hannibal like that. Like a dog with its owner, a child with its parent. 

Patient as ever, Hannibal smoothed his palms up over Will’s shoulders, squeezing and kneading the muscles drawn taut beneath his scapula with his thumbs. His breath smelled like citrus where it ghosted against Will’s cheek, warm for comforting, and after a few moments and Will released a ragged exhalation. Hannibal eased an arm tight around his waist and drew him close, so that Will’s spine nestled against his own chest. “Relax,” he murmured, lips at Will’s throat. “You can forget yourself, Will. The stream you sink into, the one you find inside your mind...you can find it here, too. Let me be the current.” 

“I’m not crushing you?” Will asked, cringing as Hannibal shifted slightly under him, drawing his legs up onto the couch, moving so that they were both somewhat reclined. “I feel like I’m crushing you.” 

“I’m quite comfortable,” Hannibal assured him. “But you are not. Did your father ever hold you like this?” 

It struck Will in the gut like a punch, forcing air from his lungs, blood to his cheeks. He flushed deeply and squirmed in the cage of Hannibal’s arms, certain in this moment that every confused thread of sensation and longing he had felt in regards to this shift in their dynamic had been, indeed, Hannibal’s intention. “No,” he admitted after awhile, voice grinding out. “He wasn’t the warm, loving type. He worked a lot, but he did take of on those father-son bonding trips. Fishing, camping. But they were never warm. I don’t remember him hugging me, for example.” 

“What about a pat on the back, for a job well done? Did he ever ruffle your hair? Praise you?” Hannibal asked, eyes dark and rapt as he listened to Will, all the while touching him. Rubbing his palms down his forearms, up his ribs, over the thrum of his heart. Up to his hair, a pantomime of what he was saying. 

It was too much, Will was flayed to the raw nerve and Hannibal was plucking at it, trying to elicit the perfect sound. “Maybe, very occasionally. After he came back from a business trip or if I caught a fish. But overall, no. He was one of those quiet, stoic men, the ones who always look sad.” 

“Like you,” Hannibal observed. “Did you wish he touched you more, when you were growing up? Did you crave his affection?” 

Will shivered, thinking that Hannibal had crossed a line, had trodden in territory he was not yet ready to explore. Still, he made himself swallow and answer. “Not his affection, no. I do remember being jealous of boys at school though, boys in little league. They all had nicer houses than me, you know. Big cars. I guess they had nicer dads, too, and I could see that. My dad never came to my games or school functions, but I wanted the whole thing, really. Not just the perfect dad, but the perfect life.” 

Hannibal nodded against him. “They were conflated for you, ideal fatherhood and wealth, luxury.” 

“I guess so,” Will said, stomach flipping over. He knew what Hannibal was doing, knew what he was saying. The inevitable conclusion to this carefully laid out trail of breadcrumbs Will was supposed to follow, the realization he was meant to come to. He bit his lip, knowing full well he could not just say it, couldn’t crawl straight into Hannibal’s trap as he had done so many times before. His body bore so many scars from this pattern, and though he _knew_ he would die covered in them, no stretch of his old skin left unmarred, part of him felt compelled to deny Hannibal, to play him as he was forever being played. So he stayed silent, listening to Hannibal’s heartbeat against his back, metronome steady. He was not going to say it; that would be up to Hannibal. 

“Was he a good father?” Hannibal asked eventually. 

Will shrugged. “I used to think so. But he raised a murderer, didn’t he? So maybe not.” 

Hannibal paused, fingers coming to rest at the ditch of Will’s elbow there they traced idly, nails razing over tender skin. He cocked his head, and after a moment, spoke. “I could be a better father, Will. If you let me.” The words hung heavy and dark and terrible in the air between them and Will felt as if he could not breathe, could not speak. Humiliation unfurled in the pit of his stomach, hot and black. 

He felt his pulse speed up under Hannibal’s fingers, felt color creep down his neck and past the collar of his shirt. _Yes, yes yes_ , he kept thinking, just that single world stuck on repeat, like something broken, malfunctioning. Part of him wanted desperately to scramble out of Hannibal’s lap, to stand like an adult and deny the wave of relief choking his throat, bringing a fierce prickle of tears to the tails of his eyes. But most of him, all of his scars carved by Hannibal’s hands, all of the sickness and longing left from having survived the fall, begged him to cave. In the end, it was this that won out.  
“Ok,” he said finally. 

Hannibal nodded, and kissed his throat, behind his ear, the corner of his mouth. “Good boy,” He whispered, soft filthy words Will ate up and swallowed. “You may let go.” 

Will’s eyes fluttered closed, and he realized that he already had. 

\---


End file.
